(fl 1582–1620). Italian soprano, lutenist and dancer, wife of Antonio Archilei. Probably a pupil of her husband, whom she married most likely in 1582, she was a protégée of Emilio de' Cavalieri in Rome and was with him in the service of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici before he became Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1587. She participated in the festivities for the wedding of Eleonora de' Medici and Vincenzo Gonzaga in 1584. When Cavalieri was made artistic superintendent at the Medici court in 1588, she went with her husband to Florence, where she became one of the most famous singers of her time. She apparently remained in the service of the Medici until her death.
She had a major part, as soprano soloist and lutenist, in the spectacular ‘intermedii et concerti’ for the comedy La pellegrina during the festivities for the marriage of Ferdinando de' Medici and Christine of Lorraine in 1589. Her performance in Cavalieri's Disperazione di Fileno (Carnival 1590–91) was said, by the editor of his Rappresentatione di Anima, e di Corpo, to have moved the audience to tears. She made two extended visits to Rome: in winter 1593–4, when she sang before Filippo Neri, and in 1601–2, when she stayed with Cardinal Montalto; it was probably during the first of these visits that the Spanish composer Sebastian Raval wrote ‘many’ madrigals for her, later published in his Madrigali a tre voci (1595). She also performed in the festivities for the wedding of Prince Cosimo de' Medici and Maria Magdalena of Austria in Florence in October 1608. Subsequent references to her in Medici court records mainly concern performances of sacred music in Florence and Pisa, usually together with Caccini's daughters (Caccini's second wife Margherita may have been her pupil).
Her date of death is unknown: a Vittoria Archilei was buried in SS Annunziata on 3 February 1645, and court salary records note payments under her name through 1643, but her last known letter is dated 28 September 1619 and the last record of a performance at court seems to be from 1620. In 1614 Giambattista Marino published a poem ‘In morte di Vittoria cantatrice famosa’ and Vincenzo Giustiniani spoke of her in the past tense in his Discorso (c1628). Whether or not she lived until the early 1640s, her career seems to have ended by 1620.
The opening piece in the first of the 1589 intermedi, ‘Dalle più alte sfere’, composed by her husband or Cavalieri, was a solo for her to the accompaniment of her own ‘leuto grosso’ and two other chitarroni; it was published in 1591 (along with the other music of the intermedi; ed. D.P. Walker, Les fêtes du mariage … Florence, 1589, Paris, 1963/R) with the treble part in both its original form and a highly elaborated one, much as she must have sung it, suggesting her extraordinary virtuosity in improvisatory passage-work and ornamentation. She was in close touch with modern tendencies in Florentine music and obviously sympathetic to them; both Giulio Caccini and Jacopo Peri cited her, by way of buttressing their respective claims to primacy in the new monodic style, as having performed their music. Caccini (preface to Euridice, 1600) wrote that she had ‘long ago’ adopted the new manner of passage-work ‘invented’ by him. Peri (preface to Euridice, 1600/01) called her the ‘Euterpe of our time’ and said that she adorned his music not only with brilliant passaggi but with graces too subtle to write out. Another, perhaps more impartial, musician, Sigismondo d'India, lauded her (preface to Le musiche … da cantar solo, 1609) as being ‘above any other’ an excellent singer, spoke of her as ‘most intelligent’ and emphasized the sweetness and tenderness of her voice. Her talents were also praised in a madrigal by Marenzio (Cedan l'antiche tue chiare vittorie in his Secondo libro de madrigali a sei voci, 1584), in verse by Ottavio Rinuccini and Battista Guarini, and also by Vincenzo Giustiniani, Pietro della Valle and Severo Bonini.
ES (E. Zanetti)
SolertiMBD
V. Giustiniani: Discorso sopra la musica de' suoi tempi (MS, 1628, I-La); pubd in A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903/R), 98–128; Eng. trans., MSD, ix (1962), 63–80
A. Ademollo: La bell'Adriana ed altre virtuose del suo tempo alla corte di Mantova (Città di Castello, 1888)
F. Boyer: ‘Les Orsini et les musiciens d'Italie au début du XVIIe siècle’, Mélanges de philologie, d’histoire et de littérature offerts à Henri Hauvette (Paris, 1934), 301–10
F. Hammond: ‘Musicians at the Medici Court in the Mid-Seventeenth Century’, AnMc, no.14 (1974), 151–69
T. Carter: ‘A Florentine Wedding of 1608’, AcM, lv (1983), 89–107
W. Kirkendale: The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence, 1993)
T. Carter: ‘Finding a Voice: Vittoria Archilei and the Florentine “New Music”’, Feminism and Renaissance Studies, ed. L. Hutson (Oxford, forthcoming)
H. WILEY HITCHCOCK/TIM CARTER